This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Lee Ruddin
Mar 3, 2009
On Monday an international conference organized by the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library and the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, explored George Bush’s legacy and the significance of his Presidency.
The Right Man? Assessing the Legacy of George W. Bush covered Bush and the Institutions of American Government; Ideology and Ideas in the Bush Presidency; Bush Foreign Policy Legacy; and Ranking the Bush Presidency.
Yet,
Source: NYT
Mar 2, 2009
Iraq’s special criminal court on Monday acquitted Tariq Aziz, the man who once served as the urbane, cigar-smoking public face of Saddam Hussein’s rule, in the first of three cases against him, delivering the most significant not guilty verdict in the prosecutions for crimes against humanity that occurred before the American invasion in 2003.
Source: Time
Mar 2, 2009
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the U.S. military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside the United States, deploy high-tech surveillance against U.S. citizens and potentially suspend First Amendment freedom-of-the-press rights in order to combat the terror threat, according to a memo released Monday.
Many of the actions discussed in the Oct. 23, 2001, memo to then White House counsel Alberto Gon
Source: NYT
Mar 2, 2009
Preparing for the 50th anniversary next Tuesday of a failed uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule, Beijing authorities issued a white paper on Monday presenting their interpretation of Tibetan history, comparing the abolition of "serfdom" in Tibet under Chinese rule to the emancipation of slaves in the United States. The Dalai Lama and other Tibetan leaders have accepted that traditional Tibetan society had shortcomings, but contend that Beijing has long exaggerated the plight of Tibe
Source: VOA
Mar 2, 2009
Tourism is bringing economic benefits to the Laotian city of Luang Prabang, the spiritual, religious and cultural capital of Laos for centuries. But with commercialism on the rise, some are worried the town is losing its identity.
Nestled deep in a Mekong River valley, Luang Prabang was cut-off from the outside world by decades of war and political isolation. A fusion of traditional Lao dwellings, French colonial architecture and more than 30 monasteries, the whole town was declare
Source: Reuters
Mar 2, 2009
A Chinese art collector identified himself on Monday as the winning bidder in last week's Paris auction for two sculptures looted from Beijing in the 1800s but said that, as a patriot, he had no intention of paying.
Christie's, which had triggered Chinese anger by holding the sale, would not say what action it would take against the bidder, only that the bronze sculptures of the heads of a rat and a rabbit would not be released until it had been paid.
Cai Mingchao, a co
Source: Times Online (UK)
Mar 2, 2009
One of Egypt’s most noted Pharaohs is once more standing tall and looking out across the Nile Valley, by the efforts of an international team and a little help from the British Museum. A colossal statue of Amenhotep III, grandfather of Tutankhamun and ruler of Egypt for more than 36 years, has been raised and given back his head.
The red quartzite statue, one of a set that stood around the courtyard of his funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan, near Luxor, fell centuries ago. In the ear
Source: BBC
Mar 2, 2009
The Central intelligence Agency (CIA) has destroyed 92 tapes of interviews conducted with terror suspects, a US government lawyer has admitted.
The agency had previously said that it had destroyed only two tapes.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a lawsuit against the CIA to seek details of the interrogations of terror suspects.
Techniques involved are understood to have included water-boarding, which the Obama administration says is
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 2, 2009
The Security Service was so concerned about the threat from Communist spies that its agents scrutinised the lives of suspected sympathisers Lee Miller and Mai Zetterling, analysing their choice of friends, recording their movements and even intercepting their post.
Lee Miller was already a famous fashion photographer, a muse for Picasso and a former lover of the surrealist painter Man Ray when MI5 began its investigation into her activities, according to the files at the National A
Source: Spiegel Online
Mar 2, 2009
German car components supplier Schaeffler appears to have been more deeply involved in the political system of the Third Reich than previously assumed, according to research conducted by SPIEGEL TV in Poland.
It was already known that a company acquired by Wilhelm Schaeffler in 1940 in the town of Kietrz in what is now Poland employed forced laborers, but Polish researchers are now also linking the name Schaeffler to the processing of human hair from the Auschwitz death camp.
Source: BBC
Mar 2, 2009
Beatrice Nirere was convicted by a Gacaca traditional community court set up to deal with 1994 genocide cases.
The Rwandan Patriotic Front member had denied helping set up road blocks where ethnic Tutsis were killed and chairing meetings to plan the massacre.
Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the 100-day slaughter.
Source: BBC
Mar 2, 2009
He was sentenced along with several other former officials over the 1999 killings of Shia Muslims in Baghdad.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was acquitted by the Iraqi court.
Majid has already received the death penalty for a campaign of genocide against the Kurds in 1988 and the crushing of a Shia uprising in 1991.
The executions have been held up by legal wrangling, and he remains in US custody.
Source: Slate
Mar 2, 2009
The opening of a sex shop in the historic district of Alexandria, Va., has generated outrage among local residents, who claim such a business sullies an area once frequented by the Founding Fathers. Were there sex shops in George Washington's day?
No. There is little record of sex toys, let alone a sex toy industry, from America's Colonial era. To the extent that Colonials used sex props, they would have made them on their own. (In one of the few references to sex and inanimate obje
Source: WaPo
Mar 2, 2009
The team that ran the most technologically advanced presidential campaign in modern history is finding it difficult to adapt that model to government. WhiteHouse.gov, envisioned as the primary vehicle for President Obama to communicate with the online masses, has been overwhelmed by challenges that staffers did not foresee and technological problems they have yet to solve.
Obama, for example, would like to send out mass e-mail updates on presidential initiatives, but the White House
Source: Survey commissioned to mark the debut of UKTV’s new history channel
Mar 2, 2009
The majority of British adults find it easier to remember details surrounding key historical events than significant moments in their own lives, including the death of a loved one or the birth of their first child - that’s the verdict of a compelling new research project released today.
The study, which was commissioned to mark the launch of UKTV’s new history channel Yesterday, was led by Professor Geoff Beattie who asked 300 people to recall exact details of 32 personal and histor
Source: Newsweek
Mar 2, 2009
Tuesday, Feb. 24, is the 206th anniversary of Marbury v. Madison, the most important decision the Supreme Court—and perhaps any court—has ever issued. The late chief justice William Rehnquist hailed it as "the most significant single contribution the United States has made to the art of government"; nations around the world look to Marbury as they work to create institutions that will protect the rule of law. As the United States thinks anew about its commitment to these rules, it woul
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 2, 2009
In Nazi art, films and magazines, women were always portrayed as the fairer sex, fighting on the home-front as their menfolk fought on the battlefields.
Adolf Hitler awarded them gold crosses for rearing children and honoured their role as wives and mothers - a soft image that was rarely questioned after the war.
But a new book by the historian Kathrin Kompisch has revealed a very different reality.
"Apart from a few particularly cruel examples, the p
Source: AP
Mar 1, 2009
Palestinian authorities disbanded a youth orchestra from a West Bank refugee camp after it played for a group of Holocaust survivors in Israel, a local official said Sunday.
Adnan Hindi of the Jenin camp called the Holocaust a ‘‘political issue’’ and accused the orchestra’s conductor, Wafaa Younis, of unknowingly dragging the children into a political dispute.
He added that Ms. Younis had been barred from the camp and that the apartment where she taught the 13-member
Source: BBC
Mar 1, 2009
The UK's oldest man has reached a new milestone by becoming the oldest ever British man, after clocking up 112 years and 296 days.
Henry Allingham has lived longer than Welshman John Evans, who died in 1990 aged 112 years and 295 days.
Mr Allingham is one of two surviving World War I veterans in the UK and is also the oldest Royal Navy veteran.
He is spending the day quietly at St Dunstan's care home for blind ex-service personnel near Brighton.
Source: AP
Mar 1, 2009
He was one of the greatest mass killers of the 20th century, but that doesn't stop the hopeful from praying at Pol Pot's hillside grave for lucky lottery numbers, job promotions and beautiful brides.
Nor does it stop tourists from picking clean the bones and ashes from the Khmer Rouge leader's burial ground in this remote town in northwestern Cambodia.
The grave is among a slew of Khmer Rouge landmarks in Anlong Veng, where the movement's guerrillas made their last stan
